“The question of working with Dr Mahathir is an unimaginable disaster waiting to happen.”

– Ramkarpal Singh Deo (2015)

COMMENT | Former prime minister (twice) Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s attack against DAP’s Tony Pua smacks of the usual racist dog-whistle politics that defines the Umno way of doing political business. “Arrogant” is a racist trope that has been used against the DAP for decades.

It really does not matter if you think that Pua (above) did something wrong or not. I submit that whatever Pua did or did not do is normal behaviour between the political and business apparatus of this country.

Of course, nobody really knows what really goes on in the corridors of power and we should be sceptical whenever political operatives air their versions of the “truth”. Furthermore, this really goes to show us how servile the DAP was in the presence of the old maverick.

Lim Guan Eng in revealing that the old maverick threatened to sack him three times from his finance minister post, does not exactly inspire confidence merely because it demonstrates how two-faced Pakatan Harapan political operatives were in their reassurance to the base that Mahathir was steering the good ship Malaysia on a proper course.

Mahathir’s swipe at Pua is not really about how the bureaucracy works or should work but rather a reliable strategy for revising history to suit his ethnocentric narratives. And it's all really bizarre.

The old maverick said he was pro-big business for obvious economic reasons but remember all of this is based on some sort of racial...